Numagoo Blog

The Simple Reason Why Google Maps Knows When There’s Traffic

13th January 2017 Posted by numagoo

Google Maps tracking data and how it helps us.

Google Maps is a great asset to everyone in everyday life even if we might not realise it, it gets us out of lost situations and helps us out when we’re in a hurry. You may all have wondered at some point how does Google Maps know if the roads are busy or quiet? Or where does it get its information from?

Well, the answer is very simple; when we enable our location services on our phones that instantly allows them to send location data back to the servers. The servers are not only getting data from your location but they’re also pulling it from all other pools of data, such as transportation authorities data.

Obviously, some people may not like the idea of Google knowing exactly where you are, that can be stopped easily by disabling your location services. But why do that? If everyone did that then inevitably Google Maps will crash.